Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing

Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing pays a median $43,380 against $50,020 across all occupations — $3.19 an hour of difference. At that distance the deciding variable is where you do it, not how long you have done it.

61,420 people are employed as Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing. At that scale every large metro has a real market, and the difference between a good year and a bad one is usually which employer you are at rather than whether anyone is hiring.

Woodworking suits people who want a finished object at the end of the day and can work to a tolerance in a material that moves with the weather.

How long it takes to become one of the 61,420 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.

A quarter of Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing earn under $37,100 and a quarter over $48,720: 1.3x, and $11,620 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.

The 25th percentile is $37,100 — $17.83 an hour, and $12,920 below the $50,020 typical American job. Entry-level in this field means that number, not the midpoint, so budget against it.

Avoid it if dust, noise and machine risk are not acceptable to you every day for the whole of a career.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 61,420 people employed as Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.

A 1.3x ratio from $37,100 to $48,720 makes $43,380 a dependable planning number. Dependable is the whole offer here — there is not much room above it.

In cash terms the middle half of Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing runs $37,100 to $48,720 — $11,620 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $43,380.

The 75th percentile is $48,720. Reaching it from the $43,380 midpoint is $5,340 a year; reaching it from the $37,100 that the bottom quarter of Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing earn is $11,620.

There is $6,280 between $37,100 and $43,380, and $5,340 between $43,380 and $48,720. The lower half of the range is marginally the longer one — worth knowing if you would be entering Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing at the bottom of it.

On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing is $20.85 an hour. The quarters sit at $17.83 and $23.42, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.